Wow...this preoccupation of misunderstanding clearly written english is becoming weird!

PUBLICATION does NOT equal INFRINGMENT!

Publication is when an image is published (MADE PUBLIC)! Infringement is when someone actually USES an image for which they DO NOT OWN THE COPYRIGHT!

That webpage is entirely about copyright infringement, and is talking about publication which is infringing.

Yes, it is true that a copyright infringment cannot occur until a copyrighted image is published (by the infringer)...otherwise, how would you know that the image had be stolen?

But...to quote the Website author:
"By registering works with the Library of Congress within either three months of the first publication or before the infringement occurs, copyright owners become eligible to recover statutory damages and attorney fees against infringers." This plainly states that the (your) work must be registered within the first three months of (you) publishing it or before the infringer publishes it.

Yes, it is true that a copyright infringment cannot occur until a copyrighted image is published (by the infringer)...otherwise, how would you know that the image had be stolen?

But...to quote the Website author:
"By registering works with the Library of Congress within either three months of the first publication or before the infringement occurs, copyright owners become eligible to recover statutory damages and attorney fees against infringers." This plainly states that the (your) work must be registered within the first three months of (you) publishing it or before the infringer publishes it.

Ok, I'll admit your reading of it is possibly correct, but you have to take the whole article into account, and thus the context in which the sentence is being used.

Basically, the "you"'s that you put there aren't actually there, and it's equally possible that the second "you" should instead have "the infringer" in its place.

Equally, it doesn't make sense that the law would be structered to protect the people stealingthe work, rather than the victim. And again, it doesn't make sense to have that time limit at all if your reading is correct, as the infringer wouldn't be able to get hold of the image to use himself if it hadn't already been published somehere.

Again though, it is possible that you are right, but the most I'll concede is that the paragraph is badly written, and thus leaving it open to interpretation, certainly not that it "plainly states".

As I can see neither of us are going to agree here, I have emailed the Copyright agency and asked them to clear it up one way or the other, and if theywrite back (which they may not, as they say they can't answer anything to do with legal issues - which itself makes no sense as they deal solely with the law of Copyright :?), and if they do I'll post their response.

Well, as we already know. Some of the people making the laws in the government etc are a bunch of morons. Take the words 'free range chickens' for example. They define free-range to mean the chickens must be allowed access to the outside for some amount of time. So, the farmers understand the loop-holes and thus can keep chickens indoor with a window or something that they can't quite reach. They're 'allowed access' to the outside...but unfortunately, the chickens haven't got the ability to get to the outside. So I'm just wondering how these clowns make the regulations. I would have simply said, the chickens must be outside of the cage/pen to freely walk around outdoors in an area of at least XX (sq metres) per chicken etc. Or something more specific.

In the case of these legal issues about photo copyright. You wonder why the same source says no registration is needed, and at the same time, they say registration is required. If us educated people can detect inconsistencies or at least ambiguous stuff, then these morons that make the rules should get their act together and reword everything to make things clear and specific. Surely they can manage that.

Well, they replied. And although they didn't directly answer the question we can draw some conclusions from it.

"There is no requirement to register a work with the Copyright Office.
As you assumed, you must have a registration with the Copyright Office in order to enforce legally your ownership in the work you have created.
It is advisable to make a registration with the Copyright Office before an infringement occurs to be eligible for certain remedies under the law."

Essentially Eric S was right in the first place, in that you must have registered before the infringement to gain automatic rights.
In light of that, it shows that you are correct that it means the first publication anywhere.
With these two facts in place, I now read the following:

"By registering works with the Library of Congress within either three months of the first publication or before the infringement occurs, copyright owners become eligible to recover statutory damages and attorney fees against infringers."

to mean that the three month limit is there to provide an exception to "you must have registed before the copyright violation", so if your copyright is infringed right after you picture is first published you can still claim the same rights as if you'd registered before the infringement.

An example of how this would work, and why it works this way, is as follows:

You take a great photo of the winning touchdown at the Superbowl. You sell this photo to the New York Post right after the game for $1000, for one off publication, and it is in the next day's paper.

You haven't registered this photo yet, and as that process takes four to five months (quoted on the copyright.gov website) you don't want to wait, as obviously in 5 months time the photo is going to be old news. In light of that there seems little point in bothering to register it at all.

But the day after that you see your photo is in the LA Times. When you ring them up and complain they refuse to give you any money for it, so you decide you're going to sue.

But because you didn't register before the LA Times stole your work this would mean you'd lost your automatic rights to claim money without needing to go through a messy court case that could drag on for months.

Or it would if it wasn't for the three month rule.

Because of that you can send of the photo for registration a week later, and although it will take 5 months to complete the process it's now a simple task to make sure you get paid for your work.

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As I think this is what you inferred in an earlier post, do you now agree we're both reading this the same way?

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Now to go back to a point Eric S made earlier "I can swore I heard of people suing who hadn't registered".

Use the same example as above, in that you didn't register the picture right away, but pretend your copyright wasn't infringed until six months later, when you walk into a store and see someone is selling posters of your photo!

Because you didn't register it within three months of it first being published you've lost your automatic rights.

As a result, you don't have anything to really gain from registering it, so although you have to now register before you can take the poster company to court the fact that you have registered will now have no effect on the outcome of the case, so there's no reason to mention the registration - it has just become a formality.